Why Marie Claire Should Kiss My Fat Heiny

I'll mostly let the ignorance speak for itself, except to say that if I should ever have occasion to run into this woman, I will be sorely tempted to strip off all my clothes and totally mack out on my wife, so that she can be fully grossed out by my fat ass getting some action.

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/fatphobia-alert-fatties-should-not-be-allowed-to-kiss-apparently

That this "article" made it past an editor (even in one that sports anorexic models on every second page) is beyond my comprehension.

one of those days

Ever have one of those days where everything seems so difficult and so trying, that you want to repeatedly stab yourself in the eye with a fork? 

Ever have one of those days where you think stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork sounded like an improvement over your current activities? 

Ever have one of those days where if one person tells you how much they love being a parent or how perfect their kid is or how the world just needs more positivity or something of the like, that you will want to repeatedly stab them in the eye with a fork? 

Um, I haven't of course.  (Being the total paragon of positivity that I am...)

I was just wondering if you did.

gender busting and kiddos

Some very lovely peeps of mine (thanks Rachel and Trish) pointed me in the direction of a couple of really amazing resources for kiddos around gender non-conformity, and then I found a couple on my own.  If you've been sticking with the blog for a bit, you know that working against the grain of gender stereotyping and gendered social rules is an important issue to our family.   Boy-o, though in many ways stereotypical "boy", has also been known to wear a princess dress and rock the ponytails now and again.  And it's my hope that Girlio will follow her own path and find her own ways to circumnavigate all the heteronormative, gender normative messaging that's so pervasive in our culture.   (Because the strict rules we carry around gender limits, and sometimes hurts,both boys and girls.)   The reason I was so excited to find these resources,  is that there is a veritable dearth of information around rewriting and reworking the concept of  gender, and gender roles, particularly for the small set. 

Anyhoo -without further blabbing on my part - on to the resources!

The first is a series of three colouring books (and though as a general rule, I am anti-colouring book because they are more likely to stifle creativity than encourage it, for these I'll be making a big ole exception) created by Jacinta Bunnell, and illustrated by a host of artists.

The first book is called Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away With Another Spoon. This colouring book's description explains: "We have the power to change fairy tales and nursery rhymes so that these stories are more realistic. . . . Sometimes the Spoon...aids the work of dismantling the Princess Industrial Complex by moving us forward with more honest representations of our children and ourselves. Color to your heart's content. Laugh along with the characters. Write your own fairy tales. Share your own truths."

Um, can we say "you had me at hello?!"

#2  in the series of colouring books is Girls are Not Chicks, which is described as "twenty-seven pages of feminist fun! . . . Color the Rapunzel for a new society. She now has power tools, a roll of duct tape, a Tina Turner album, and a bus pass!  Paint outside the lines with Miss Muffet as she tells that spider off and considers a career as an arachnologist!  Girls are not chicks. Girls are thinkers, creators, fighters, healers and superheroes."

Yup - Still loving it.

And then the latest in the series is Girls will Be Boys Will be Girls  which is touted as "a fun consciousness-raising tool for adults & children who want to unlearn a lifetime of sexist and heterosexist education."

Information about the author and illustrators, as well as ordering information at:  http://www.girlsnotchicks.com/ or  http://www.etsy.com/shop/parthenialoyal

I can tell ya that Santa might be getting his queer on and dropping a few of these goodies off at our house this year.

Then, while perusing one of the sites that the aforementioned colouring books are available at, I stumbled across a really cool sounding children's book. 10,000 Dresses, written by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray, explores the journey of a young boy who yearns to create and wear beautiful dresses. 

The publishers description says: "Every night, Bailey dreams about magical dresses: dresses made of crystals and rainbows, dresses made of flowers, dresses made of windows. . . . Unfortunately, when Bailey's awake, no one wants to hear about these beautiful dreams. Quite the contrary. "You're a BOY!" Mother and Father tell Bailey. "You shouldn't be thinking about dresses at all." Then Bailey meets Laurel, an older girl who is touched and inspired by Bailey's imagination and courage. In friendship, the two of them begin making dresses together. And Bailey's dreams come true!"

The book is available here: https://www.reachandteach.com/store/index.php?l=product_list&c=37

My Princess Boy is a book written by the mom of Cheryl Kilodavis about her own, and her family's experience with son Dyson's gender nonconformity.  Please watch the clip below about their family, Dyson's amazing school, and their experiences.  It is really so so lovely to see such openness to letting this little dudes negotiate his self-expression in a world that writes boys pretty darned narrowly (though I think I would've left my four year old at home, but that's just me).

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/10/17/princess-boy-addressing-childrens-gender-non-conformity/

And check out the book and the website:  http://myprincessboy.com/



Pretty Slam

Katie Makkai - Pretty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

Other than the fact that pretty has six letters, not five - this piece encapsulates quite nicely why I cringe every time someone calls my girl "pretty."

A blog repost, in honour of SOPWAM: "Just a Housewife"

(This is a repost of my third blog post ever.  I thought the repost fitting, given my last post regarding SOPWAM.)

I am a feminist. I believe firmly that a woman's "place" is wherever she wants and needs to be. (I wish very much that we lived in a world where that were possible for all women). I also believe that happy (reasonably) well-adjusted parents make happy, (reasonably) well adjusted children, regardless of whether those parents work outside or inside of the home. So why is it that I find it so difficult to answer the question: "What do you do for a living?" I find it equally distressing to respond to the ever present: "So, when are you going back to work?"


I hate the word housewife. I hate the word homemaker. These words are so loaded with patriarchal bullshit that I can barely utter them in any seriousness, much less use them to describe myself or what I do. Yet that's the check-box that applies to me. And because of it, I get dismissed by the folks at the bank, the car dealership, and occassionally, other parents. It feels like a pretty limiting check box. But what else do I call myself? How can I encapsulate what I do, day in and day out, without sounding either overly-simplistic or self-denigrating?

I have a master's degree in Gender Studies. I'm a complete and total nerd and I love researching and writing. In fact, it's one of the only things I've ever been really good at. I always thought I'd be an academic, and was planning for a return to school for my PhD immediately following the birth of my son. But things didn't quite turn out that way.

Being at home with my son was a real learning experience! Some days were amazing and I felt thrilled and gratified at being able to witness and guide the growth of this little being. Some days were horrendously frustrating and tiring and what I couldn't wait to get "back out in the world." All of the days (and often nights) were long and challenging. But when that first birthday rolled around, and it came time to look at putting Boy-o in daycare, I simply couldn't do it. The very thought of it made me want to cry and throw up at the same time. I just wasn't ready to let go of my role as stay-at-home mama. When Boy-o was just shy of two, I started to feel a bit suffocated, and decided to look around for some part-time work outside of the home. And then, I got pregnant with Girlio. So - I've been out of the paid workforce for almost four years now. But not out of the workforce.

To say I keep my household running would be an understatement. I make it possible for my partner to focus on her paid work because of all of the behind the scenes work I do. Cooking, cleaning, child care and sock washing. (It is invisible and undervalued work, but work nonetheless).

I don't deal in the economies of paychecks (at least not mine) - I deal in the economies of scraped knees, band-aids, juice boxes and swing pushes. I struggle each day to instill creativity, love of life, respect for the earth and for humanity in my children. I am working my ass off to raise children who will not be sexist or racist or homophobic, who will value difference and do their part to make this world a better place. I do this while struggling not to let my identity become subsumed in the world of my home and children. Some days are better than others. There are many days when my cats rubbing against me for attention at the end of the day makes my skin crawl, because if one more thing "needs me", I will die/cry/spontaneously combust. And seldom a day goes by when I don't find myself wishing I had more contact with a world outside of child raising, more money, more time on my own, more positive feedback to nurture my sense of self and importance in the world.

But this I know for sure. Child raising is labour. A labour of love, most certainly, but labour nonetheless. Hard labour. The hours are crap, the pay is worse, the vacations non-existent, and the acnowledgement from the world around us pretty non-existent.

What do I do for a living?

I'm a teacher and a doctor and a therapist and a laundrymat. I'm a playgroup leader and a chef and a nutritionist. I'm a personal shopper and a cleaning lady and a librarian. I'm a taxi driver and a soccer coach and the occasional jailer. I'm the CEO of this operation, and I'm pretty good at it. I'm up to my eyeballs in laughter and tears and dirty diapers and snotty kleenex. I'm on call 24/7. Fit that in a check-box.

When I am going back to work?



Fuck off.

listening to the radio

So after dropping off Boy-o at school yesterday, I was driving around listening to CBC waiting out Girlio's carnap so that we could meet up with a friend.  And I was tremendously enjoying the conversation between a feminist ethicist and some other person who annoyed me about the continued trend towards older motherhood in our generation.  The 'some other person who annoyed me', we'll call her SOPWAM for short, was raising some really quite alarmist perspectives about the mean age of new mothers being 30.7 years of age, such as the next generation of children will be increasingly orphaned, and saddled with their old ailling parents far too soon, etc. etc.  She was pretty negative about 'older mothering' and basically insinuating that older mothers shouldn't have access to reproductive technologies just because they missed the boat, so to speak.  And the other speaker, an ethicist, kept raising these perfectly wonderful points like the fact that women of our generation are having kids later and later because they feel like they have to choose between raising children and having a career, because women/mothers are discriminated against in the workforce, because there isn't meaningful support for parenting in a way that lets women pursure parenting and a career (easily accesible,affordable daycare, etc. etc.)  At any rate - this bit is besides the point...

It was such a great listen - I was feeling really engaged and into the discussion, talking back to the woman who was clearly wrong (erm, I mean, with whom I was disagreeing), and nodding in agreement when her sparring partner hit a particularly salient point. It felt great to be envigorated and engaged (albeit by myself!) in this great intellectual argument. 

And then, SOPWAM said something along the lines of:  "I wasn't a stay at home mom, I'm one of those career women who had dreams and goals for myself...." the sentence went on, but it was totally lost on me.

I could literally feel my self-esteem sinking. 

(It likely fell somewhere between the break and gas pedals, on the floor of the car in which I was driving my napping daughter, en route from dropping off my son, in the throes of my little, little, little, dreamless, goal-less life).

It might have even made a little plinking sound as it went.

I felt myself completely tune out.

I felt myself totally dismissed.

Newsflash lady:  everyone has dreams and goals for themselves... even l'il ole 'houeswives.'

Our whole family rocked the purple yesterday.

I thought about not saying anything about wearing purple, and the meaning behind it, to the kiddos.  It's a big, sort of scary concept - a lot for smalls to take in.  And though they'll find out about this big 'ole world soon enough, you don't want to, you know, rush it along.   But my child is the child of queers.  He will undoubtably know sooner than many kids that the world doesn't always (or often) appreciate difference.  And while I don't believe it's right to fear-monger with kids (aka give too much information too soon), I also don't believe cocooning them and giving them the (false) impression that the world is always a safe, wonderful and just place for everyone is the way either.  And it is incredibly important to us to raise him and Girlio in a way that really emphasizes the need to respect and value diversity. 

So- how to talk about "Wear Purple Day" in a way that's meaningful and honest without giving out too much information for a not-quite-four-year-old?

I eventually decided on something along the lines of:  "We are wearing purple today to remember some kids who people were really mean to because they were different. These kids really, really got their feelings hurt when people were mean to them.  Wearing purple today helps us to remember them and to remember that being different is what makes us all special.  And that it's never okay to be mean to someone just because they are different from us." 

And I left it at that, and he tootled on to the very important business of playing before it was time to leave for school.  I wondered how much of what I'd said he'd taken in, and what his mind would do with what I'd told him.  I didn't have to wait too long to find out, though. 

Upon arriving at school, Boy-o threw off his jacket and backpack in his cubby and launched himself at his teacher (whom he adores) so quickly and with such excitement that he was practically tripping over his words (and his feet!): "Today is PURPLE day!  I'm purple today because everyone is different and we shouldn't be mean!" he shouted happily.

Bless his gigantic not-quite-four-year-old heart.     

FCKH8 indeed :)

http://fckh8.com/

In honour of the day people have chosen to remember the youth (queer or assumed to be) who have taken their lives due to homophobic bullying and hate, I'm choosing (while also sporting a fine shade of purple) to post the very in-your-face video by the crew at fckh8.  It's funny as hell and straight to the point and just as pissed off as I am. 

I will just include the caveat that if you choose to watch this link at work, you may want to think about turning the volume down.

Getting better and wearing purple

In the horrifying wake of several queer youth suicides across the United States, people are being inundated with questions about "how this could happen?" (which I won't even dignify by addressing).  We are also being directed, via Facebook and other forms of social media, to the various ways people are responding to the crisis, including Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign (previously also linked in my blog), and advertising blitz for The Trevor Project (crisis intervention and support for queer youth) and the Wear Purple Day of Remembrance/Mourning  (Sept. 20th).  

Having a greater number of folks made aware of projects like the It Gets Better Campaign, The Trevor Project and the Wear Purple Day of Remembrance is part of the upside of the Facebook share button.     Raising awareness and sharing information is certainly a necessary aspect of making change in the world.  But there is a down-side to that share button, and other forms of FB or social media 'activism' too.   We can hit that "share" button or join a FB group and think: " Now I'm doing something about the problem."  And most of us stop right there.  It's a lazy activism, because it doesn't really require anything of us.  (And don't get me wrong, I do it all of the time, so I'm not pointing fingers here).

It makes us feel better, without really taking on the fundamental issues at hand.  (That being the everpresence of, and over-all social acceptance of, homophobia and heterosexism).  In America gays cannot marry.  They cannot openly serve in their military.  Homophobia is thus legally sanctioned by the state.  And lest we think we are much better in Canada, our own Prime Minister (though it pains me to call that jackass our PM) ran on a platform that included denying my family's right to legally exist.   (He doesn't much like the gays, Mr Harper doesn't - and Canadians by and large don't seem to take much issue with this).  And Albertans live in a province run by (and I know this will come as a shock to ya'll), rednecks, who passed a bill relatively uncontested that forces public school teachers to notify parents if sexuality (re: sex education), sexual orientation (read: queers) or religion (read: non Judeo-Christianity) is to pop up in class discussion.  Because here in Alberta, we believe it's a parent's right to keep their child nice and ignorant. 

Wearing purple or sharing a good link or piece of information is a decent start.  But it's not nearly enough.  Not by a longshot.  Tell people WHY you are wearing purple.  Tell them til you're blue (or purple?) in the face.  We have to start speaking up.  In big ways and small.  Speak up to our governments and politicians.   Write letters.   Make phone calls.  Vote.  (VOTE!!!!!).  Speak up to comments that are both directly and indirectly homophobic: like the random stranger at the wedding who makes a huge deal out of another straight guy wearing Lulu Lemon workout clothes (aas he repeats ad nauseum, "Hee hee - I wouldn't tell that to too many people"...), or the family friend that always says: "That's so gay," or the coworker who drops the word "fag" every now and again.   Think about where you spend your money.  What values do those companies have?  What values is your money supporting?  For instance, the owner of Best Buy/Target just made a huge campaign donation to an anti-gay candidate in the US.  They lost my business, and I told them why.  I don't shop at Walmart because, among other reasons, the owning family is vehemently anti-gay (and anti-choice) and like to spend their gazillions supporting anti-gay (and anti-choice) organizations.  And as mentioned yesterday, they are choosing to sell an anti-gay children's book.  


Kids are being bullied and choosing to take themselves out because of the bigger picture.  Because we've created a world in which such behaviour is, in fact, the logical conclusion.  

If we want our kids to stop bullying, to stop hating and to stop fearing difference, we have to stop tacitly supporting that behaviour.  We have to show them how. 

We have to actually mean it.

Reason 5481 I flip the Birdy to Walmart

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978585672

http://biggaynews.com/walmart-carrying-anti-gay-book-for-children/6234


It would appear that in addition to donating a tonne of money to anti-gay and anti-choice organizations, paying male employees more than female employees, and continually squashing their worker's right to unionize, Walmart is coming out of the closet with their gay hating ways.  They are selling a children's book (yes- a children's book) by Janice Barrett Graham, wife of Standard of Liberty president Stephen Graham***, called Chased By An Elephant; The Gospel Truth About Today's Stampeding Sexuality.  The book was intended by the author to, "help shed the clear light of truth on today's dark and tangled ideas about male and female, proper gender roles, the law of chastity, and the God-given sexual appetite."


Angry.  Angry.  Angry.  Angry.  Really, really, really  angry.   Have I mentioned that I am really angry?

***The following is taken from the SoL website:  Standard of Liberty is an LDS-oriented educational foundation which exists to raise awareness of radical sexual movements overrunning America's Christian-moral-cultural life and to inspire the public will, families, and individuals to counteract these trends.